


wreckage of the stars

by cyanica



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Childbirth, Dean Winchester Whump, Gen, Graphic Labour, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Mpreg, Pain, Parent Dean Winchester, Pregnancy, Pregnant Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Takes Care of Dean Winchester, Vomiting, Whump, graphic birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23875669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: He wouldn’t dare think about how fucking lonely and starved of love he had been to crawl like a devotee into some stranger’s bed because of how badly they temperarely filled up the family sized piece of broken euphoria missing from soul.Ironic how that longing for a broken family had a cosmic effect, like the universe of stars was taunting him, or had a fucked up idea of what mercy looked like.Or, they left California weeks ago, Dean's very much in labour, and Sam – with all his fancy-shmancy college-education – doesn't know the first thing about delivering a child.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 100





	wreckage of the stars

**Author's Note:**

> okay, warning, this is really, really graphic and gross, with a side of existentialism(?). (there’s a question mark because not even i know.) so yeaH, graphic descriptions of mpreg, birth and vomiting.
> 
> btw, this is in au where anyone can get pregnant apparently.

Dean’s skin shone pale and shimmery against the moonlight that bounced off his figure like the stars that polluted his vision whenever he dipped his head low into Sam’s chest and closed his eyes too tight. Those swirls of endless nightly suns threatened to shut off the world as it counteracted and threw him into a vortex of deep outer space. Each glow of stardust and vivid constellation he saw behind his closed eyelids was amplifying that searing headache burning holes in his brain. Every new wave of physical pain in his stomach was concocting violently alongside his pounding head.

Why the agonising process of bringing another human into the world also required the most intense migraine he’d ever had – complete with the whole cartoonish ‘ _hallucinating the whole Milky Way’_ thing – he didn’t know. Maybe the universe just decided things needed to be a bit more interesting, as if it wasn’t a Goddamn Greek Tragedy to begin with.

The contracting pain webbed up his spine, contorted his hips and finally stayed constricting and ripping away at his abused stomach muscles like a serpent strangling and constricting upon its prey. His heavy, distended stomach glistened with salty sweat covering the rest of his body, and hung low in the squatting position he’d found himself in for the last few minutes.

By now, screaming through the contractions had been reduced to animalistic groans, hyperventilation and pure silent sobs, like the stupidly cliché chicks and dudes in movies did who always seem to find childbirth so traumatic. Though, Dean did deserved to give himself extra credit for doing this over the course of two days, in some no-name town’s fungi-infested pay-by-the-hour motel bathroom, complete with STDs and God-knows-what covering the moldy tiles, all while the only company he had was a secretly terrified little brother who – with all his fancy-shmancy college-education – didn’t know the first thing about delivering a child.

They were so fucked.

Dean threw his head back, unable to stifle the hellish noise that escaped his lips. As the contraction simmered off into a dull kind of ache settling in his lower stomach, his body suddenly dropped forward like a falling star, collapsing from the sky rather than shooting through it. Wishful thinking and shooting stars had died a long time ago, long enough for Dean to realise _falling_ – even in love – was never a good sign. And when the stars fell, it was something to be mourned, never hoped upon.

His arms that were barely holding onto the edge of the bathtub sank to the floor, palms hitting cold, icy tiles, and knees buckling like the strength to hold himself up was all too much anymore.

The loud, disturbing animal-like groans escaping his mouth had transformed into breathy whimpers. Hot tears pushed themselves from his glassy eyes that caught the light from the moon shining outside the bathroom’s only window. Dean's weeping face looked like an intergalactic storm, with tears as dying stars burning his pale skin, and a clusterfuck of a space debris for a soul.

The blue tint to his dead lips and veiny eyelids scared Sam. His skin was bloodless and cold, the way the room was, and made him shiver when he touched his brother’s body. The shadows cast from jutting-out bone with little muscle composition was made even more prominent upon Dean’s half-naked body in the dim nightlight – he looked skeletal, sickly. The pale, stretched skin of his hugely ballooned belly was the only evidence to suggest that Dean was pregnant; every other inch of his body appeared as if it was fading or wasting away.

Sam had asked once what the hell happened to his brother while he was away in California, and the response was a fist to his jaw that painted his skin in sickly blue, purple and yellowish watercolours, bleeding over healthy, sun-kissed skin. For a very heavily pregnant dude – one that looked like he could barely keep himself upright half the time – the punch had felt as if there was any more power behind that hit, his jaw would’ve shattered, broken apart into fragmented bone and blood vessels. The constant reminder of ‘ _you left me, Sam_ ’ tainted the younger brother’s flesh like a disease; it haunted him in the mirror, and constantly morphed his reflection into the very things they hunted.

It had been four weeks since Dean took his psychologically-deep, internalised abandonment and other mind-fuckery issues (that he didn’t think Sam knew about, but he did) out on his brother’s face. The fact that Sam realised he _himself_ was more at fault than his father or anyone else, for why Dean was the way he was, almost made him weep. And so, the hues of humanly colours bled and stained over his abused flesh.

To distract – _to lie_ – to himself, Sam instead focused on what Dean did tell him, and let the guilt suffocate him later in dreams of burning flesh from the ones he couldn’t save and blood raining from the ceiling.

_Dad's gone. Let's hit the road. He needs us._

That's what Sam had been able to understand, in a time where gravity has essentially crashed down around him, and the false sense of home he'd made for himself burned alongside everything else.

_But Dean, you're –_

_Thanks, Florence, for the observation. I wasn't fucking aware._

Part of Dean figured that the only reason Sam agreed to look for their dad was because, when they found him, Sam was gonna unleash the entirety of Hell upon him for allowing Dean to hunt while pregnant… And then for making Dean search for him when he decided to fuck right off without even a text. And it wasn’t like Dean actually _wanted_ World War III to tear his family apart (again), he just hoped that maybe _this_ was what could bring them all back together.

Because in truth, Dean hadn’t seen John in months, and their dad had no fucking clue that Dean had gotten himself knocked up. It left a bitter taste in his mouth when he thought about it – coordinates after coordinates, case after case, always hunting solo.

So there _was_ no John to care about Dean’s condition, or be there for his son when things got too familiarly chaotic in his existence that John damned: _‘The Life’_ – though he wouldn’t dare think about it more than that. Wouldn’t dare think about how he had despised Sammy for selfishly running away to go to college, leaving him behind to be abandoned by an obsessed maniac of a father who would always see him as an obedient little soldier, rather than a human being. And he wouldn’t dare think about how fucking lonely and starved of love he had been to crawl like a devotee into some stranger’s bed because of how badly they temperarely filled up the family sized piece of broken euphoria missing from soul.

Ironic that that longing for a broken family had a cosmic effect, like the universe of stars was taunting him, or had a fucked up idea of what mercy looked like.

So hustling money was spent on a pregnancy test that passed positive with flying colours, booze became stolen morning sickness relief drugs, and the wall became embedded with broken glass and drenched in cheap beer – because. Because, _yeah_ , he had been fucking terrified, and spent an hour cursing at the stars and taking it out on a motel’s ugly wallpapered drywall, but fuck him if he was going to cast away the only sense of _family_ he had left.

– Because that’s what sane 20-something year olds do when they find out they're pregnant, have nothing but a GED, hunt monsters for a living, and a selfishly sacrificial undying loyalty to the concept of family.

Maybe now, under the scrutiny of so many lights and galaxies raining down upon his being, Dean finally understood the kind of life he was damning his child to, in the same way his father did before him.

Not a shred of dignity was between either of them – father or child –, having to birth a baby in the bathroom of a disgusting pay-by-the-hour motel. A motel just like all the rest, where his child would blow out candles upon a Walmart cake, and sit with a headache doing homework in the dim yellowish lighting of much-too-old lightbulbs. Where they would come back to every other night, washing off the slime of a wendigo, or the shedded skin of a shapeshifter, or the blood of their own kin – well, that’s if they were lucky. Some hunters never come back at all – a new lesson their father was teaching them.

“Th’s isn’t right,” Dean moved an arm to wrap around the lower half of his heavy, swollen stomach and closed his eyes again to escape his mind that just wouldn’t _stop_ , taking to face the painful galaxies behind his eyes instead. He swayed at the pounding of his brain, along with the unbalanced nature of his all-fours position, now that one palm was no longer supporting him. Sam careful lay a hand on his back, caressing the cold, sweaty skin, as if he could will the pain away that tormented his brother so.

“You’re doing so well, Dean.” Sam soothed, and his words faded into the night like a whisper, like a dying ball of gas and flame and heat. He’d researched this, of course. He’d researched the mere basics of how to check dilation, time contractions, deliver babies. But after so many hours of bearing witness to his brother writhing in pain, being unable to speak, to breathe – Sam lost himself in the hopelessness of it all, and everything he thought he knew evaporated from his mind like steam on scorching concrete.

Now, the only thing that he was using to keep both of them going, was the knowledge that this couldn’t last forever. “You’re nearly there, okay? You’re gonna be okay.”

“ _Nngghh_ , liar. ‘Said th’t an hour ago.” Dean huffed out a gasp as he felt the next contraction building against his back and stomach, contorting all throughout his lower half, splitting it in two. Biting down onto bleeding, cracked lips, Dean rolled his hips back and pushed the heels of his feet into the backs on his thighs, riding out the wave of agony in a low groan.

“Fuckin’ hurts–” He moaned as the pain peaked, residing low bellow his bellybutton and relentlessly attacking abuse stomach muscles that pushed and pulled in on themselves until they threatened to destroy each other. He dropped his head, tucking his jaw to his chest, breathing in a way that sounded more like he was suffocating on the agony.

“ _AUUNGGHH!! God!_ ” He rolled his hips back and forth, trying to ease the monstrous amount of pressure colliding with his insides as the wave continued, seemingly stronger than the last lot of contractions. It got to a point where the agonizing constricting and convulsing of his gut made him feel like he was going to be physically sick. Every time he moved his head or repositioned his body, stars danced before him, and _woah…_ Yep that was nausea – thick, heavy and slivering up his throat in violent heaves.

“Oh, _oh_ , shit. Dean, are you–“

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a warning besides that, before he actually did throw up all over the floor in front of him.

The loud, heavy animalistic groan coming from his mouth mid contraction was abruptly cut off by a watery, brownish liquid that Dean choked up onto the tiles. Sam reached for the bin in time to watch his brother’s pale white face turn a sickening green shade, but it was too late – along with blood, amniotic fluid and sweat, the bathroom was now covered in puke. It was as disgusting as it sounded.

“Oh, God. Hey, okay, it’s okay. I got you.” Sam rushed out a jumble of words Dean didn't catch. He took to helping his brother squat back on the balls of his feet, rather than continue to be hands-and-knees in front of his own sick. Dean seemed completely drained of energy from the last contraction and the bout of vomiting, so he barely made it upright. He held on, white-knuckled, to Sam’s arms for support.

“Can’t do th’s,” Dean breathed, glassy eyes glinting in and out of focus upon Sam’s blurry face and slipping closed every few seconds unevenly. “ _Woah_ ,” The world swayed violently, making him even more seasick to his stomach. He swallowed down bile in order to keep more of his putrid stomach contents where they should be.

“Hey, c’mon. I’m not gonna let you pass out on me now.” Sam said, and the ghost of a smile graced his lips, but the glassiness and whirlpool of fear and worry raging within his eyes betrayed him. Sam grazed his palm over his brother’s cheek, tilting Dean’s face gently so his brother would meet his eyes, willing Dean’s own to focus.

“Th’s isn’t right,” he mumbled, and the words seemed to spill out like the sun dripping warmth all over her nine, orbiting worlds. “Th’ kid – th’s life, I can’t do th’t to ‘em. What Dad did to us – I can’t let it h’ppen, ‘cause…”

– Because the past was an infinite loop that stretched beyond the canvas of the universe. History repeated itself like a serpent eating its own tail. And this was the Winchesters’ life. Destiny always seemed to have a way with things.

Sam felt the lump in his throat threaten to cut off his words, his air. Sam had never seen Dean afraid of their father, until it came to becoming him. “Dean…” Sam whispered, the gravity of so many emotions weighing heavy in his voice. “That will never happen, okay? _God_ , I swear it.” His smothering, crimson anger towards John Winchester seemed to open up a new cavernous black hole in his soul.

Dean either didn’t see the flashes of hot resentment in those bright hazel orb-like eyes, or he just chose to ignore it. He nodded once before vertigo set in and the pollution of celestial body burned in the wake of the bathroom.

“Trust me on that.” Sam said, the edge of desperation coating his voice, because _yes, damn it_ he was scared – Hell, he was _petrified_ . Two lifelines were balanced in Sam’s terrified, bloodstained hands and he had no fucking clue of what to do. But the world be damned if he allowed his brother to see that. Sam was able to see unapologetically through the broken facade of fearlessness and pride that made up Dean Winchester – until all he saw was his scared, older brother who was hurting and terrified and fucking needed _him_ , the way Sam had needed Dean his whole life.

“Do you trust me, Dean?”

Dean blinked weary eyes at him, nodding wordlessly, before a new wave of pain took ahold and ceased his body. Dean’s stomach hardened and stretched underneath Sam’s fingertips, just as his grip on his brother’s upper arms threatened to draw blood from his jagged fingernails. Dean’s gravelly and long moan suddenly erupted into a low cry. He threw his head back, almost like he was crying out towards the heavens – for mercy or a _fuck you_ , whatever it may be–, until he felt a rush of more amniotic sack fluid gush down his legs and onto the floor.

“ _Sam_ – oh, God! I – _Aaaugghhh!!_ ” He shouted in between breaths. Almost automatically, the hand that previously gripped around Sam’s arm went to cradle around his tightening, swollen abdomen.

The pressure increased inside his pelvis, igniting a new level of pain he didn’t think he could register anymore, and he simultaneously wondered if he had anything left in his stomach to throw up again, because – “ _Auugh_ !! Holy _fuck_ ! Ow, ow, ow, _shit_! Sam, I-I think I gotta push.”

Dean cautiously moved his hand down from his aching stomach and felt around for the entrance of his opening, trying to feel for the baby’s head, but with the pain still radiating even after the contraction faded, it was difficult for him to tell.

Startled at the mention of progress, Sam gaped. “O-Okay, okay, good, Dean. That’s good.”

Dean didn’t have much time to recover before the next contraction started, and so he made his disapproval known by a loud, gravelly yell that even had Sam wide-eyed and staring in horror. His pelvis was breaking apart, he could feel it. His body burned, and stretched, and tore, and if this lasted even just one more hour, he was certain it would kill him. “Ngghh! Get it _out_ of me! Just get it out – _AUUHHGGG!!_ ”

Sam couldn’t see anything _down there_ from the way they were positioned, both squatting and facing each other, while Dean’s incredibly swollen and protruding belly hung between them. So, he moved his hand down to follow where Dean’s was, and felt for the head as Dean bore down.

And there.

Dean’s child. His nephew. Barely at Sam’s lingering fingertips. Their family wavered between existence and not, between earth and the galaxy of stars that made up Dean Winchester.

“Holy shit, Dean. I can feel his head. He’s right there.” Sam breathed in awe, eyes as wide as planets and sparkling like starry vortexes, silently filling with glassy tears that threatened to fall.

Dean caught his brother’s eyes and wanted to find that sense of wonderment Sam seemed to feel so vividly, but his own body didn’t let him. The baby demanded out, and it was taking all of Dean’s energy to do so. He screwed up his face, and bore down hard enough that somewhere, he had broken blood vessels. He was certain of it.

“Nggh…. that’s nice." He murmured with a pained scoff. "But I’m c’nstantly feelin’ ev’ry _instance_ of him, so can we be amazed after he’s not wreaking havoc inside of m– nggh… _Fuck!_ ” Dean bit down on his lip, gritting through his teeth, seemingly screaming through them.

At the sight of his brother, shaking and wavering like a solar flare, trying to bare down as hard as he possibly could until he was a scarlet red all over, and breathless from the pain drowning his entire being, something snapped inside Sam. The embodiment of clarity washed over him like a shower of meteorites and space debris, plummeting into him in heavy, shocking waves which only served Sam to get his shit together.

Sam held his brother steadily by the arm, keeping him from falling forward or breaking apart, until the contraction was over. Once it was, Dean slumped against Sam’s chest, violently shaking on the balls of his feet as all the muscles in his body seemed to protest what was happening to it. Carefully, Sam spoke, “Dean, I need to see what’s going on, alright? Do you wanna try lying on the bed–?”

The sentence was ripped away from Sam’s mouth as Dean began urgently shaking his head, amplifying the vertigo, nausea and that raging fucking headache searing behind his eyes, but he fought against every affliction the way he had been conditioned to his whole life, and ignored them. “Can’t walk, stand up… gotta stay here.” Dean swallowed around the wet gag bubbling up his esophagus. The nausea was so strong that it rivaled his cramping stomach, and brought a whole new agony to the labor that hadn’t been there before.

Sam forced down his own bile for an entirely different reason as he absorbed Dean’s words that reinforced how royally fucked they were. Sam thought about carrying Dean, letting his brother lean the entirety of his weight on Sam in order to get to the pitiful safety and mere comfort the motel double-bed had to offer, but looking at Dean struggling to squat and how he gripped onto Sam’s own forearms as if they were lifelines, Sam didn’t think trying to move Dean that far in his current state was a good idea.

“Okay, that’s alright. Can you rest against the edge of the tub?” Sam suggested, though it didn’t really look like Dean was paying attention. Either way, his brother nodded losely, sucked in a breath as if to prepare himself, and tried to push himself up from the ground. Sam caught him as Dean feverishly swayed forward, and helped him almost lean halfway between sitting and standing against the edge of the bathtub, hands braced on the yellowish-stained acrylic and feet flat against the ceramic tiles which probably hadn’t been cleaned since the ‘90s.

Dean moaned through another contraction that settled deep into his gut, pulling the muscles down, and forcing the thing inside of his body _out_. It burned like fire on the inside of his stomach, making it as taunt and stretched as a drum. He was sure the skin would break. Angry, white stretch marks had already littered his skin throughout the pregnancy like the stars in the night that loomed above him, though he could feel the skin breaking all over again with the newest agonizing cramps. He gripped the side and underneath of his swollen, bloated, overdue belly to stifle the ache, both inside and out, though the pain was unbearable, and he found himself unable to breathe at the intense agony.

Along with the change in position – which sloshed around whatever was left in his gut – sickness seemed to take over his body that left his mouth acting on its own accord, erupting a wet, violent retch that he didn’t have a hope of stifling. Vomit spilled down the baggy t-shirt of Sam’s he’d been wearing for two days straight, and in any other given situation, Dean would’ve been mortified that he’d just thrown up, half-naked, stomach the size of a planet in front of his little brother; but in that moment, he couldn’t care less. It seemed as unimportant as the world – as the rest of the universe – that taunted him with evil mercy. Each sickening, spinning rotation of Earth never once slowed so he could count his heartbeat, catch his breath.

“...‘threw up again,” Dean factually stated with a mumble, as if Sam hadn’t been vividly aware already. Dean didn’t take his hands off his stomach, even as the contraction slipped away into a numbing, aching pain that would’ve had him writhing hours ago, but now felt like heaven on Earth contrasted with the other agonies.

_Four outta ten, Winchester scale. Suck it up, quit your bitchin’, and do the thing people have been doing since the dawn of_ fucking people.

“I know, it’s okay, you’re okay.” Sam hushed with no actual regard for what he was saying, but God be damned, did he pray to all the stars and deities of the universe that it was true. He gently guided Dean’s hands away from his own stomach, so he could remove the disgusting stanford shirt that would probably stay ruined at this rate. It was loose and baggy around Dean’s shoulders and chest, though around his middle it stretched thin, exposing a generous sliver of his pale, swollen belly that made the fabric rid up quite uncomfortably. Without it, Dean looked so much more vulnerable, shaking naked in the cold bathroom air – so Sam quickly dressed him in another t-shirt of his own, the biggest one he had, which didn’t say much considering it exposed more of his bloated, contracting stomach than perhaps the college one.

“Sorry,” Dean murmured, blinked through bleary eyes, hands trying to remain firm on the tub as he leaned forward. “‘M not v’ry good at th’s.”

“Shut up,” Sam wanted to laugh, maybe even more so because he couldn’t tell if Dean was joking or not, and the hysterically unbelievable insanity of the night – hell, past _month_ – was finally catching up to him in some form of chaotic mania. The crescent moon reigned even amongst the threatening sky of twilight, shining in through the cracked window. It’s pale, isolated nature served to craze and derange them in an unapologetic way, haunting them with its cold and desolate demeanour of false hope.

Sam now realised with solidifying dread what ‘lunatic’ meant.

Later, he’ll allow them both to have respective nervous breakdowns about this, complete with post traumatic nightmares, and panic attacks at the sight of red and moonlight – all thoughts of which were just about the only ones keeping him going. Maybe once this is all over, sleep deprivation, four Tylenols and half a bottle of whatever’s in the fridge will knock Dean out before any of that happens.

“ _Burns_ ,’ Dean grunted, as the skin around his hole felt as if it was going to tear and bleed and shred itself until he was nothing but mutilated flesh. Combined with the pure agony of the current contraction ripping apart the muscle and bone of his stomach and spine, Dean – for the first coherent time in the two days he’d been labouring in this fuckforsaken town – wondered if he was going to die; if giving birth, if his _baby_ , if his _idiotic philosophy_ to be his family’s _martyr_ was going to kill him.

The damned bathroom looked as if it was the gallows in which hanged the universe’s sins, and Dean was walking towards his deathbed. Blood tainted the tiles in a mockingly evil way like it wasn’t that vital essence of life, and drowned Sammy’s hands and arms as if his little brother was responsible for this Winchester Greek tragedy of a life.

Dean could feel himself _screaming_ , his vocal cords were shredded – another absolutely ruined piece of Dean Winchester – and the flammable, searing-white agony behind his eyes that demanded its cluster of vortexes inside his head, was evident of just how fucking violent his world had become.

– Yet piercing white-noise flooded his eardrums as the pain grew to something inhuman.

And then he was sobbing, tremorous-like whispers mixed with cascading, heavy tears and the inability to breathe constricted up and around Dean’s throat and lungs like stealing away his life force, almost as if they had stolen the importance of the sun.

Sam’s mouth was moving too fast for Dean to catch what his brother was saying. It was too rapid, too smothering. The white-noise blared like an alarm to signify the end of all things, and Dean couldn’t even keep his eyes focused for that long before stars seemed to fall into place, and Gemini or perhaps Scorpious burned like fire in front of his eyes.

“You… gon’ be a good uncl’, S’mmy.”

“...–on’t ta… –ike that! Dean, listen to me – damn it!”

Dean heard his brother’s voice from underwater, yet the violent, blinding pain of another contraction overlapping the first one came to take its place. The inhumanness of reality and pain – of which didn’t seem real anymore – broke him out of his temporal stargazing of constellations that weren’t really there.

Sam positioned his hands to meet where the baby was just beginning to crown, and quite very possibly prayed aloud to whoever-the-fuck was listen that Dean had enough sheer will and determined stubbornness to get through this. His brother’s hands were trembling as they clasped the edges of the bathtub, so tightly the thin skin was stretching and breaking apart as if Dean was crumbling at the seams. His eyes were open, but in a hazy-dead sort of way that frightened Sam because Dean looked devoid of… well, just entirely devoid. Like a smothering darkness – a black hole, one that died along with the falling stars and burning galaxies, leaving the sky absent and isolated. Dead.

The screaming stopped for mere moments like ephemeral periods of lucidity people – the ones who were beyond unsavable – had just before they died of some putrid illnesses or succumbed to blood loss.

Dean swallowed thickly amongst thousands of words he needed to say, but instead just looked at Sam the way a man would who was marching into the gallows built from the unjust smithereens of the universe’s many evils, and then suddenly Sam wanted to scream.

“No.” Sam said, chin quivering and throat constricting like speaking was the most difficult thing he had ever done. “No. Dean, don’t! No!”

Dean flinched with every syllable as the words turned into shouting that could rival his own. Perhaps his mind, currently filling up with smoke and fog, had smothered any sense of clarity and coherence from his brain, so much so the birth of this baby could have been something to ignore. Perhaps he could just slip into the oblivion of desolate space… well, if it weren’t for his body pulling and pushing and _tearing_ in some primal instinct to get the child out of him.

“I’m righ’ here. Calm your shit.” Dean murmured out in between contractions as if he were still himself, capable of witty remarks and oblivious towards Sam’s hysteria – even though each word made it feel like he was sinking further and further out into the unknown.

Sam, knowing once again _how fucking royally fucked they were,_ didn’t so much as take it as a sigh of relief so much as he did prove of life. Either way though, Sam repositioned his hands that had previously been gripping Dean’s jaw and face hard enough to leave marks, and put them at the baby’s crowning head once again.

“On the next contraction, I need you to push. Really, really hard, okay?” Sam instructed and held himself together the way he might during the zombie apocalypse, standing amongst a rain of semi-automatic gunfire and simultaneously being kabab’d by flying ninjas with flaming katanas… okay, that sounded more like a Winchester’s Friday night in which Sam would bitch about but ultimately prevail pretty well in… but fuck you, the point still stood. Dean almost smiled at the mental image, but had to use up his energy on responding to his brother. Words wouldn’t form from his mouth, so a single nod sufficed.

“ _God_ ,” He clasped onto the rim of the bathtub so tightly, the skin around his knuckles stretched thin and turned a bloodless white, much like the rest of his body, as Dean bore down. The skin around his opening felt aflame, stomach contracting so profoundly that he could feel the baby turn and correct itself into the right position to where it’s head didn’t recede back in.

“That’s it, good job!” Sam breathed in relief over the top of Dean’s own gasping, laboured breaths. Sam had bundled towels on the tiles, between Dean’s feet. The pale white had bleed a now crimson red. He used one of the clean towels to dab at the baby’s skin, clean the nose and mouth. “The heads out. You can rest for a bit.”

“Mmm,” Dean replied, not really all there, but the pain was grounding, made gravity pull him violently back down to Earth, it was impossible to escape until this was all over.

Sam saw the distant glaze to his brother’s eyes, and watched as his head fell back towards the ceiling, as if searching the sky for forgiveness, for mercy. He wasn’t sure which, but perhaps the emotions of the night had just collapsed into a wreckage of stars at this point, and blended like bruises on skin, ink on paper. They were victims of the universe.“You’re nearly there. It’s gonna be okay.” It didn’t feel like a lie, more so a prayer.

Dean swallowed, blinking bleary eyes up towards the heavens and the ghost of a damaged smile twisted his lips. “Yeah,” he said.

“Alright, you ready?” The grace period was over almost as soon as it began, just as dawn seemed to bled pastel amber sunlight over the horizon like a broken, bleeding yolk.

“No,”

“Well, too bad. He is.”

Vices in his stomach seized control, creating an overlapping sensation when the current contraction bled into the next on. It had Dean screaming so intensely that, with the murderous states of the bathroom, if other motel-guests were to investigate the 5AM cries, they would think an actual felony had been committed.

Dean didn’t even feel very grounded to his body anymore, some instinctive, primal instinct had taken full control and forced his body to push, baring down like life depended on. It did. The pain flourished through his veins, but it was impossible to stop pushing, or scream after he had started. He could almost see himself as if he were floating in the air above. He watched down upon the scene, not associating himself with reality. It was like watching an old VHS recording that flickered with static and white noise, and on screen, his real body stood half-standing half-leaning against the tub, in the pitiful bathroom drenched in his blood like a tragic battlefield. To the left of the frame, off-centred, but in complete clarity, his brother was crouched by his side, delivering his baby. It was like his body had dissociated from itself so much so that he was no longer in it, instead ascended in between the membrane of reality and an abstract universe.

_Hm_.

A piercing, violent cry ripped through the air and brought Dean slamming back into existence so hard that it had hurt. Throbbing, engulfing pain had spread out through his body life wildfire, but the contractions were gone. He could breathe again.

Sam was cradling the child, _his baby_ , in steady, protective arms, wiping it down with a towel to clean the baby from blood and placental fluid, but also to stimulate breathing – judging from the desperate way Sam deemed vital. The baby was wailing, _loudly_ , but even so, Sam rubbed it down, preparing for the universe to take away what was good like it always had.

“Sam,” Dean whispered, not wanting to break this fragile sense of time that had consumed them, and not really having the will to do anything else.

Sam was crying. Small tears pooled and shed down from the corners of his eyes, and his breath hitched as he breathed. He looked down. The dirtied towel dropped from his hands, while his finger stroked the sides of the baby’s face, soothing it and shushing it in a delicate way. Its powerful cry whimpered off into a small mewl, and only then did the brothers’ eyes meet for the first time since the stars fell to Earth.

“I was wrong.” Sam said wetly with a quiet laugh. “She’s a girl.”

And maybe now he understood. The being in Sam’s arms was _everything_. He had known them all but sixty seconds, but that baby, _his child_ , was Dean’s meaning to it all. The universe wasn’t what they had thought, but _she_ was the catalyst for them to build themselves better.


End file.
